Nibbles – Page 465 – Agricultural Biodiversity Weblog

September 21, 2007September 21, 2007

Atomic energy for agriculture

Make food not war: FAO head praises International Atomic Energy Agency.

September 19, 2007September 19, 2007

Norway to ban pig castration

To snip or not to snip? Norway bans pig castrations, The Economist ponders the ramifications.

September 19, 2007September 19, 2007

Camel farming

Farm camels, feed them halophytes to fight desertification?Â

September 18, 2007

British grub

Britain’s oldest recipe sounds as awful as more recent fare.

September 18, 2007

Seedless lemon mutant

Pip-less lemonÂ launched. Cocktail drinkers rejoice.

- China is building its germplasm collection at the National Frigid Zone Crop and Soybean Germplasm Resources Mid-term Bank in Harbin. Cool.
- Driscoll’s helped build China’s blueberry industry, then discovered that knowledge, infrastructure and genetics have a habit of escaping. Not so cool.
- Meanwhile, the Philippines wants its rice collection to hit 21,000 varieties by the end of the year. IRRI unavailable for comment.
- Italy is establishing a major global olive genebank. Unclear where it fits in with other major global olive genebanks, but some redundancy is good.
- FAO showcases Globally Important Agricultural Heritage Systems, where crops, landscapes and traditional knowledge have survived together. Like olives in Italy, I guess.
- The mangelwurzel is making a comeback, because apparently forgotten root vegetables just need better publicity, and not a fancy GIAHS.
- Ohio growers are trying to save the pawpaw just as Americans are discovering it, partly because of better publicity.
- BeanGPT is bringing AI to breeding and farming beans. Maybe it can help the mangelwurzel and pawpaw too?
Published on September 23, 2026